The coach of the senior national team of Nigeria Jose Peseiro has given his take on inviting players from the Nigeria Professional Football League to be a part of his team.
Peseiro called up eight players from teams in the Nigeria Professional Football League for his first two games as coach of the team but ahead of his first competitive game against Sierra Leone tomorrow, only two were listed in the sqaud.
Asked if he dropped the rest due to lack of quality, the Portuguese coach said it’s about getting the right players who can help the team get the desired results after the AFCON disappointment and the failure to qualify for the World Cup.
He said he will call up home based players if he watches them and see that they have what it takes to improve his team. He also made it clear that the senior national team isn’t for players development rather for players who are at the peak of their game.
On Home Based Players
You know in the senior national team it’s not possible you improve individual performance of players. It’s not our work, it’s not our job. We can of course, if I put some player, young player in our team if they do well, so he can grow up in his career. What I can do is to improve our team. In five to six days you can not improve the fitness of one player. You can not improve the technical, the tactical. We don’t have too much time for that.
You can of course around two years if you repeat the same organization. The same talent, the same situation. The same mode of physical process you can improve them but more of it is that you can improve in 90 percent collective tactics. For that I need to choose we’ll depending on the kind of match. This guy can play in that position, this guy cam play in the other position. We don’t have a program to improve the players but we have a program to improve the national team because I believe with the quality of this player what they need is organization. They need to know what I want to do on the pitch. They come from different teams, different situations, different ideas. They come from all over the world. When they come here , we need to build one system which they feel comfortable.
We need to see because we want to do our job. We want to introduce some new players not just local players , it’s step by step but the problem of our national team isn’t players of quality, that is wrong. It’s possible we call to the team players of quality.
For that I will be here to see the match or my assistant but you have players in 22, 23 or 24 here who can play here for the next ten years which is big quality. Why not this moment is because national team is about result. We didn’t go to the World Cup, we didn’t win the last AFCON. These players are not good? For me no. I came not because I didn’t see the local players but I see the national team players. I see the players who belong to the national team now. Of course like in life, one will go, some players will go and other players will come but our best players belong to outside the country & if we want more, we will invite.
